Q 01/05

What is the capital and largest city of Iraq?

A) Basra

B) Mosul

C) Baghdad

D) Erbil

Answer · why

C) Baghdad

Home to more than 8 million people, it holds about 22% of the country's population.

Q 02/05

Ancient Mesopotamia lay between which two rivers, both of which run through Iraq?

A) Indus and Ganges

B) Nile and Jordan

C) Amu Darya and Syr Darya

D) Tigris and Euphrates

Answer · why

D) Tigris and Euphrates

Their flows were down 30–40% by 2023, a growing crisis for the country's farms and marshes.

Q 03/05

Which civilisation, which emerged in southern Iraq around 6000-5000 BC, is recognised as the world's earliest?

A) Akkad

B) Assyria

C) Sumer

D) Elam

Answer · why

C) Sumer

It gave the world urban life, written language, monumental architecture and advanced canal systems.

Q 04/05

Which Sumerian city, today's Warka, may have had 50,000 residents at its peak around 3100 BC?

A) Nippur

B) Ur

C) Lagash

D) Uruk

Answer · why

D) Uruk

It gives its name to the Uruk period and led the early urbanisation of Sumer.

Q 05/05

Which Mesopotamian poem is the world's oldest surviving example of narrative literature?

A) Epic of Gilgamesh

B) Enuma Elish

C) Atrahasis

D) Descent of Inanna

Answer · why

A) Epic of Gilgamesh

Its earliest strands are five Sumerian poems that may date to around 2100 BCE; the combined Akkadian epic followed.